The number of PFAS contaminated sites in the United States continues to expand at a rapid pace. According to the PFAS Contamination Site Tracker, managed by Northeastern University’s Social Science Environmental Health Institute (SSEHRI), there are now 1,244 sites with PFAS contamination and 1,114 water systems contaminated with PFAS. The data base includes sites in 49 states, with Hawaii being the lone outlier. The number of identified sites and groundwater systems with PFAS contamination has increased by 1200% in just over two years, from 191 in Fall 2018 to more than 2,350 in December 2020.
Northeastern University’s SSEHRI provides one of the country’s leading data bases for tracking PFAS sites with contamination. The SSEHRI is collecting data from sites throughout the United States with PFAS contamination. The most recent update according to Northeastern University, the site tracker records “qualitative and quantitative data from each known site of PFAS contamination, including timeline of discovery, sources, levels, health impacts, community response, and government response.”
The states with the most sites listed in the site tracker include New Hampshire, Michigan, California, Maine, and Alaska. Officials and scientists maintain that the number of confirmed sites in these states are attributed to the states taking a lead role in aggressively looking for PFAS contamination.
The U.S. military continues to have the most sites listed in the data base. This lines up with another recent report released by the Environmental Working Group, which listed the number of military bases and facilities with known or suspected PFAS contamination to nearly 700, with New York, North Carolina, Michigan, California, Oregon, Texas, Maryland, Virginia, Washington, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Pennsylvania at the top of this list.
Merit Laboratories is a leading national PFAS environmental laboratory, analyzing drinking water, soil, wastewater, groundwater, and other sample matrices, including biosolids and sludge. Analytical methods performed by Merit for PFAS include drinking water by EPA 533, EPA 537.1, and EPA 537 rev. 1.1 and soil, wastewater, groundwater, and surface water by ASTM D7979-19 with Isotopic Dilution and ASTM D7968-17.